Bad at math? There's no such thing!

Hello, fellow teachers! This is my first blog, other than the one or two posts I had to do for an undergrad class, so I'm excited to be back in the blogosphere!  I am doing this blog as part of my Instructional Technology Masters cohort, but I am planning on keeping this one up after this class and my program is finished. I think it is a great way to gain some knowledge from other teachers by reading their blogs and having them comment on mine as well!

Anyway, I was looking at Sam Shah's "Continuous Everywhere but Differentiable Nowhere" blog and loved his beginning of the year post.  He posted this Youtube video from Mathematigal, which goes right along with what I am trying to express to my students more this year:

I made a new bulletin board this year, getting the idea from "ELA Teacher" in her blog "ELA in the Middle" via Pinterest (Source), to discuss the same themes!

I've also put up a poster similar to this in my room, an inspiration from Mike Holtzen in his blog "Milk Jug," again via Pinterest (Source):

 
I'm trying to get my students out of the mindset of "I can't do math," or "I'm bad at math," and instead, getting them into that growth mindset of "I may not get this now, but I will with a little work."  When I was going through my undergrad and explained to people that I was a math major, I had very similar reactions to what Mathematigal experienced.  I pretty much had the "I love math!" reaction, or the "Wow, you're crazy. I can't do math." reaction.  I think a lot of our students perceptions of their math abilities come from their parents like this, who have the "I can't do math" attitude. That attitude is then passed on to their children, so then without even trying, they have the mindset that they are bad at math.  I'm trying to undo some of that with encouragement that with a little work, anything is possible!

One way I'm trying to do that is through my daily warm-ups with my Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 classes.  I'm doing this a different way than I have in the past, and it seems to be working well so far.  I'm having students write down their answers on their individual whiteboards, then I choose 2 people to present at the big board.  These two people either have different answers, or may have the same answer, but did it different ways.  Next is the discussion, where the majority of the learning happens. They have to justify their answers and explain their reasoning, and through their explanations, we have some great discussion!  I'm trying to show them that it's ok to not get the right answer, or maybe get the right answer but in a different way, and that failing is where you actually learn the most! Failure should not be thought of as such a bad thing, as long as you learn from your failures. I'm also trying to show them that math isn't just about getting the right answer, it's the process that you go through to get to the answer.  This article from Education Week describes a similar warm-up process called, "My Favorite 'No.'" I like how they have the added element of specifically looking for things the person who got the wrong answer did right before going in to what they did wrong.  I try to do this during the conversation part, but it's sometimes difficult to steer the conversation in that direction when students are first starting this process.

Does anyone else have any suggestions of other ways to continue to build/encourage that growth mindset in my math students?